Accessible Gardening: Practical Matters for Physically Challenged Gardeners, 1 by seacanepain

seacanepain wrote:
Sign language. That is a colorful method for complaining I haven’t seen in a while. One of our core group, Mike (deceased) was most involved with advancing deaf people. He ran a print shop and preferred to have deaf people working with him in the press room. The old style presses were LOUD so being able to communicate by sign language was an advantage. It is a little off topic, but I have to tell you about the craft project our little deaf contingent did once.



One day, when Mike and his deaf friends were helping Kay finish stuccoing a section of wall, they found they had some leftover concrete “mud.” I don’t know which of them initially had the idea, but they filled the right hand surgical gloves that they wore beneath the concrete gloves with the excess mud. Twist-tied the wrist closed over some steel pipe we had around, manipulated the fingers of the filled gloves so that they formed letters of the deaf alphabet and allowed them to set up that way. They liked the results so much they started finishing up every work day doing that. Eventually, they had enough “letters” they could spell out whatever they wanted. (As long as there was no “j” or “z” in it, of course) They arranged the “words” by sticking the pipe ends in the soil in rows. So messages peaked up from behind retaining walls or the edges of raised beds.



In the early days, when I was still in Sergeant mode, adjusting to civilian life and my new physical circumstances, I could be a little overbearing and difficult. It was probably good that I didn’t know the manual alphabet. I am quite sure some of those silent, concrete messages expressed their feelings about my behavior. A quiet form of venting. I guess it could have been worse. They could have lost all patience with me and simply hit me over the head with their letter “s”. lol.

Oh the pix is:
The mystery deepens!